classics digests and reviews

“Ennead I” by Plotinus

What is Consciousness

One of the things that came to mind when I read Ennead I was Alzheimer disease. I’ve heard some say that advanced Alzheimer disease makes life not worth living, and that people afflicted with this disease have become less than human. Although I strongly rejected this opinion, I did it intuitively and on emotional grounds, but failed to make any strong counter-arguments. Plotinus wrote some of his treatises on consciousness, soul and well-being when he was close to death, perhaps he had struggled with these issues personally and therefore wrote with conviction.

Consciousness, according to Plotinus, is like a mirror, it reflects the state and activity of our mind, but it is not the activity of our mind itself. Our mind remains active even when we are not conscious of it. Even when our brain has suffered damages or diseases, our mind is intact. This is in accord with Plato’s dichotomy between soul and body, mind and matter.

Intelligence transcends mind and matter, and yet it permeates all, because all things partake in its form or its image to various degrees. Our reason, i.e. reflexive thinking, is derived from Intelligence. It possesses the form of Intelligence, but it is not Intelligence itself. To use an analogy, the relationship between reason and Intelligence is rather like that between art and life. The closer reason approaches Intelligence, the better it is.

Aristotle wrote, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Viewed in the current context, it may be understood that our mind only accepts a thought akin to its own state, and rejects that which is contrary to itself. In other words, our consciousness is reflecting not only our own mind, but also someone else’s, like a theater with more than one actors on stage. What Aristotle calls “educated” is really synthetic, not pure in essence.

Descartes’ statement, “I think, therefore I am”, is not necessarily true. Because “I” may be reflecting other people’s thoughts. and void of intelligence myself, like a mindless parrot or anything capable of echoing.

What is Perception

The Latin root for perception means literally to take in, grasp. The Epicureans and Aristotle argue that sense-perception implies change in the recipient. If there is no change, there is nothing grasped, and no perception.

Plotinus endeavors to reconcile this argument with the Platonic conception of soul as immutable by positing an intermediary, namely, the living being, which is the product of the soul’s formative power upon the body.

“Soul’s power of perception need not be immediate grasping of sense-objects, but rather it must [discern] the impressions produced by sensation on the living being; these are already intelligible entities. So external sensation is the image of this perception of the soul, which is in its essence truer and is a contemplation of forms alone without being affected.”

The sensible objects are images of intelligible forms, which reside in the realm of the soul, therefore the soul “perceives” the sensible objects, not by reaching out and grasping, but by recollecting itself and contemplating the forms within.

What is Beauty

The things in this world are beautiful by participating in form. Beauty of the body is one kind, and beauty of the soul is another and higher. The soul delights in beautiful things, but much more in virtuous souls, because they are kindred to the beauty within itself. It is a competent judge of beauty, because it has the standard of beauty, the intelligible form, within. The way to Beauty is not through the senses, chasing after shadows of images of beauty, like a man who grasps for a beautiful reflection on water and sinks to the bottom. Only the beautiful can see beauty, and only the pure in soul can see Goodness. Absolute Beauty and Absolute Goodness are one and the same for God, from whom come beauty, goodness and all that belong to real beings.

47 thoughts on ““Ennead I” by Plotinus”

Thank you, days ago I watched a film named “Away from her” which speaks about Alzheimer (a touching storyline), that I am curious when reading your post. You are distinguishing mind from brain that I find it refreshing, that stimulates me to think twice on the ending of that film (a controversial one) …. I look forward to your coming post on Beauty.

Some years ago, I was a big fan of Iris Murdoch who is a renowned British writer who died of Alzheimers’. Her husband John Bayley wrote an Iris Triology. At that time, I followed all the related books. And of course the movie Iris (2001) starred by Dame Judy Dench.
It was a heart-wrenching story. If you have not seen the movie or read the books, I highly recommend that you should.

There are lots of literature and information about Alzheimer’s in relation to support to caregivers etc.

About consciousness, again there are so many approaches. I had not been able to grasp the Greek philosophers’ approach to consciousness. But some years ago, I was a fan of Eckhart Tolle’s the Power of Now, who also talked about human consciousness.

I had not been reading these subjects for a while. Good to read some of these now. Thanks for introducing this blog which I may follow.

I cannot write more….the format here made my writing jumping up and down…ha ha…it means I have to stop…thanks!

Thanks for your comment, I put mine here : yes I watched that film of Iris Murdoch, very sad but her husband is fantastic. I haven’t read many of her books except one “The Sea, The Sea” …. Surely she writes brilliantly, no doubt.

I didn’t know about the movie. Thanks to you both for mentioning it. 🙂 I just watched a clip, in which Iris said, “Education doesn’t make us happy, but it may be the means by which we realize we are happy.” Replace ‘education’ with ‘consciousness’, and you have Plotinus.

Understanding the nature of consciousness and thought can help us deal with many mental disorders and brain diseases, including Alzheimer, Schizophrenia, etc.

The idea that the mind/soul is separate from the brain is also hinted at in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. When a friend asked the long-suffering wife of the schizophrenic mathematician John Nash, how she managed to love and support him through all those years when he had gone insane. She replied, to the effect, that she remembered when she first fell in love with Nash, she had a perfect image of him, and perfect image of him had stayed with her, and that she had to believe the true Nash was the one she had fallen in love with.

I am very familiar with the movie and the book. I read the book and watched the movie. Very few people are like Nash as he is a genius. Both Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia are sad cases. But the family ‘s care makes a difference in the course of the illness.

The beautiful mind is a great movie. If you have not seen it, you should.

what a delight to come across so probing, so
perceptive, so disciplined an armchair thinker,
Nemo, on the Internet

and so generous with your wisdom

thank you for your blog, which I will continue
to frequent

I object however to a couple of your positions,
first of all, no matter what there is in the “I” of
Descartes, what it may contain of anyone else’s
reflections, is irrelevant, the point is that the “I”
is aware, intellectually conscious, of itself,
instinctively, you can be sure, intellectually,
of yourself, but nothing else, not even what
you might’ve learned, or thought you’d learned,
from others, others, incidentally, being also only
ever sure of only themselves as conscious
beings, nothing else, everything else is
speculation, philosophy has never overcome
that, we won’t be able to, you and I, either

we are left with a multiplicity of isolated conscious
selves each with his or her interpretation of the
multiplicity, trying to find a unifying principle –
thanks, incidentally, to Plato – which we’ve come
to call God

but according to Descartes I can’t even be sure
that you exist, so that I am the unifying principle,
which ultimately is also irrelevant cause I’ve lost
my omnipotence, only half joking here

Plato’s ideal, in other words, is what you want
it to be, unless it exists in some primal Jungian
unconscious that we could never, anyway, be
sure of

furthermore Nietzsche made mincemeat out of
Plato back in the 19th Century, we are now in
the Age of Supermen, those who find the spirit
to reorder the world in their own image – did I say
“in their own image” – see here, for instance,
Beethoven, or, for that matter, Nietzsche himself,
beyond, incidentally, as he posits, good and evil,
morality is a thing of the past, just look around

cheers

Richard

psst: what happened to you introductory
thoughts on Alzheimers, you left us
in the lurch

It was Plotinus, not I, who was generous with his wisdom. I was only reflecting his thoughts as I understood them. “Freely you have received; freely give.”

You wrote, Descartes’ “point is that the “I” is aware, intellectually conscious, of itself,”

When someone says “I think”, or “I” am aware, he already presupposes the existence of the “I”. So to say next “therefore I exist” is redundant. Perhaps what Descartes really meant was, “There are thoughts, therefore there is a thinker”. This is what I argued against in my post.

On your second point, if beings are only conscious of themselves but nothing else, how then is it possible for anyone to communicate with another? In the “32 short films about Glenn Gould” you posted on your blog, One of them is titled “Hamburg”, in which Glenn listened to his music recordings in private in his hotel room together with the cleaning lady. Isn’t there a unifying principle that joins the two strangers together in that moment?

You wrote, “furthermore Nietzsche made mincemeat out of
Plato back in the 19th Century,”

I haven’t read Nietzsche yet. But as an armchair Platonist, I think it’s highly unlikely that anyone can make “mincemeat out of Plato”. I’m willing to engage/challenge any follower of Nietzsche in a friendly debate on any subject. 🙂

Thank you again for contributing. I find lively discussions/debates to be the best way to learn.

in “”How to Grow Old” by Bertrand Russell”, I was
happy to read again the great philosopher, whose
works, incidentally, are all quite accessible, except
for, of course, his earlier mostly inscrutable
“Principles of Mathematics”, but I was more
enthusiastic about your own personal observations,
or what I perceived to be your own observations,
which greatly invigorated your Plotinus text, given
your signature at the top under its heading

also Plotinus could not have written, of course, on
Descartes, therefore I deduced your script

your comments were everything I said they were,
probing, perceptive, disciplined, and I’ll add,
thoughtful and stimulating, enough to have me
respond

be aware, I’m intent on intelligent conversation,
not dogma, in either direction, and have only
great respect for what you’re doing, what you
seem to already have accomplished, I very much
look forward to reading more, if only to be spurred
on by your reading list, which is impressive, not to
mention distinguished

Descartes said “I think”, not “There are thoughts”,
which makes a lot of difference, enough to turn
the rest of philosophical history on its head,
ironically in trying to prove God, which he didn’t,
he proved the only thing that can be proven,
because I think, I am, not because there are
thoughts there must be thinking

if you tried to disprove that in your text I didn’t
get it, you’ll have to do it again

about Nietzsche, that’s a story and a half, but
yes, he refuted, to my satisfaction, Plato

so does Martha Nussbaum, incidentally, a great
contemporary American philosopher, you ought
to read her

Plato’s ideal is static, immutable, and no longer
has much to say about a universe in flux, if there
is a god it is the process, ever new and ever
changing, much like the very nature that
surrounds us, God, the fruit of Plato’s ideal, is
dead, died formally with Nietzsche, in the public
imagination in the Sixties on the cover of Time,
Plato died with Him definitively there and then

Martha Nussbaum dots that i

that’s, respectfully, and humbly, what I think

Richard

psst: about Alzheimer’s I’d hoped for a more
considered, less merely “intuitive”,
broaching of a difficult, indeed insoluble,
subject

Descartes did not prove the existence of “I”. To prove that something exists, you cannot presuppose its existence and say “something” does this or that. In other words, “I exist” is the condition that comes before “I think”, not after. If Descartes wanted to prove the existence of “I”, he made the mistake of circular logic, putting the cart before the horse.

Even if we grant that the individual is conscious of the “I”. Does the “I” exist as a part, a mere concept, in his thoughts, just as other people exist as mere concepts of his thoughts, or is there an “I” beyond his consciousness? To borrow the imagery of Plotinus, does the Moon exist as part of the reflection in the water, or does it exist independently outside the water?

Plato’s theory encompasses both change and immutability. They are incomplete without the other, nay, they cannot exist without the other. This is proven by our own experience. We can observe changes only because we’re using something static as a reference.

first of all, Nemo, thank you for this conversation,
I’m finding this exercise very stimulating, not many
have called me on my philosophical positions, not
many, I suspect, having given these positions much
thought in the first place, you are perhaps a kindred
spirit, what a delight

and as such I can only be, respectfully and humbly
ever, forthright

in a Socratic, as it were, contract

this part of Plato, incidentally, is the only part I accept,
his celebration of the Socratic Method, to put words
later into the greater philosopher’s mouth, to me, is
highly unethical, especially to spout with that authority
such drivel

you can tell I don’t like Plato

the flurry of consciousness is the clue, in Descartes,
the moment of realization, the inkling of perception,
that allows us to know that something is behind that,
producing that, without which there would be no
actuality, that something is what we call “I”

interestingly, “Cogito, ergo sum”, the Latin, often used,
translation of the original French, “Je pense, donc je
suis”, doesn’t show an “I” in its very grammar, which
is an apt demonstration of the proposition we are
discussing

if there is conscioussness of something being
conscious, something must be being conscious,
that something Descartes called “moi”, we call
“me”, others call whatever they call it

therefore I am

but I could not have done that without consciousness,
nebulous and indeterminate consciousness, but that’s
all we have, all we’ve ever had

Plato tried to fashion an alternate, paternalistic, I might
add, conscience driven, later driven-by-Christian-fear,
reality, somewhere out there, that lasted for all of the
Middle, did I say Middle or Dark, Ages, a good thousand,
count them, thousand, years, conservatively even
speaking

Nietzsche got rid of that, finally, but still all of nearly
five hundred years later

oof

where does Plato “encompass[–] both change and
immutability”, “The Republic” makes short shrift of
that, how is this “proven by our own experience”

I like “We can observe changes only because we’re
using something static as a reference”, where did
you get that, I’ll have to ponder it

but “static” is my stumbling block, in a world
I cannot see as in any way static, autocratic,
unbending

help

read also Ovid

cheers

Richard

psst: I’m putting this thrilling conversation on my
blog, look out for it

The Latin “cogito ergo sum” is actually closer to the interpretation I had in mind at the beginning,”There are thoughts, therefore there is a thinker”. If you accept that as a valid argument, then you’re closer to accepting the existence of God. “There is creation, therefore there is a Creator”.

The Republic of Plato is not ruled by an autocrat, but by Reason and knowledge. Come to think of it, Plato should be hailed as the Father of Enlightenment. 🙂 I’ve written a post on the Republic too, if you like to discuss it further.

Plato’s theory of the nature of the universe in Timaeus encompasses both change and immutability, and Plotinus explains this in Ennead II and III.

“Cogito, ergo sum”, Nemo, I have to insist, is
not “There are thoughts”, as you argue, it is
“Cogito”, “I think”, “I grasp consciousness”,
“I perceive”, it is not an acknowledgment of
any more than its own consciousness, “there
are thoughts” is a further, and only peripheral,
application, thoughts themselves are entirely
speculative and without any firm basis but
conjecture

this is a fundamental disagreement in our
discussion which needs to be recognized
and acknowledged, it doesn’t seem to have
been as yet

“There is creation” therefore, in my opinion,
is presumptuous at best, though the
proposition seems manifestly, even
irrationally, obvious, which has nothing to
do, nevertheless, with Descartes, and what
we’re discussing

should you wish to discuss more intuitive
subjects, I’ll pass, cause faith, and oratory,
have no basis in anything other than mere
seduction, the Greeks called it rhetoric and
sophistry

reason, of the Greeks, and of our epoch, is
still my essential arbiter, though my own
personal mystical devotion is ardent and
true

it is however, my own personal mystical
devotion, merely evident and convincing
by example, not argument

but I digress

I’ll read your post on “The Republic”, a
treatise I’ve found even repulsive, I’ll read
again “Timaeus”, or as much of it as I can
again tolerate, and read your “Ennead III”,
or did Plotinus write three “Ennead”s, I
hope to discover enlightenment

first of all, Nemo, let me say that I haven’t had as
much fun since a couple of weeks ago when a
friend and I were trying to come to a conclusion
about the meaning of memory, is memory all of
one’s memories, or is it the process of
remembering

I thought the process set the thing in motion
after which the memories themselves took
hold

but for the process to take hold you need at
least two memories, my friend more or less
retorted, I paraphrase

where does that leave us

I’m still thinking about it

perhaps we’ll end up at the same place,
loggerheads, but let’s try

I object to your second proposition, ““I
think” necessarily means there are thoughts”,
I believe “I think” to mean only “I think”,
nothing more, nothing less, these two
words are our speculative arena

but I admit you have a point, to think
presupposes a thought, and perhaps
not as peripherally as I’d thought
previously, if I refer to my earlier,
memory, model

but before you jump up and down in
apparent victory remember that the
thought cannot be thought without
the thinker, who initiates the thought

an apparent paradox, much like the
relation between energy and matter,
which came first

I believe the consciousness of my
consciousness came first, and from
there I evolved the process that gives
order to my world, memory, and then
its development into reason

but that’s just what I think, and, of
course, I could be wrong

essentially I, of course, must be wrong
somewhere, but I’ll never know where

nor will I know where I’m right, ever

on questions of philosophical speculation,
of course, without the advantage of
mathematics, the closest thing I can think
of, incidentally, to what we think of as God,
or is that, to what I think of, me, no one else,
what do I know of what others are thinking
of, as God, there goes He, She, It, out the
window, as a Jungian idea of collective
unified consciousness, or as a frozen
Platonic, universally conceded, ideal

what I do know is that I exist

that’s also, I think, all you know

the rest is entirely speculation

thank you Descartes

Richard

psst: all that speculation, note, is what has,
to my mind, made a paradise, for some,
of our world, for others a work of always
fascinating and wondrous invention

Actually Plotinus posited a memory model that might be quite similar to yours if I understand you correctly. There are three components in this model, the object stored in our memory, our act of remembering as if retrieving an object from storage, and the activated/retrieved image of the object in our mind. To answer your friend’s retort, we are all three components combined, though most prominent in the second component.

You object to the idea of thoughts having their object existence outside our consciousness, but you agree that we’re aware of our thoughts at the same time as we’re aware of our own existence. Is that a fair representation of your position?

If so, thoughts have just as valid an existence in our consciousness as ourselves. Ergo, there are thoughts. 🙂

P.S. People who speculate on this stuff have way too much time on their hands.

if I haven’t replied forthwith, Nemo, to your
comment, it is that I found myself with too
little time on my hands to do other things
that required my more immediate, in my
opinion, attention, though I believe time
spent speculating is never a waste of
“way too much time on [one’s} hands”,
where would Plato be, or Descartes, or
Russell, Nietzsche, Proust, yes, Proust,
my most revered lingerer, and the answer
to all my philosophical prayers, but that’s
another story I’m sure we’ll get to, if they
hadn’t dawdled around profundities

and who’s to say we’re not up to the
mark, and who could say we are, but
for conversations that test the waters,
like this one

so I, for one, will deliberate when I get
the chance, which, incidentally, is not a
lot of the time, despite objections that I
might be nevertheless still wasting it

and I return to the fray like a kid to a
very candy shop

thanks

let me point out that Plato would be
proud of us, would’ve been proud of
us, to whose time frame should we
here, do you think, refer, I think Plato
this time could take prominence, if
you’ll allow this playful speculative
divergence

this, our talk, is his Socrates discussing
with his Euthyphro, or his other acolytes,
ephebes, describing the Socratic Method,
Nemo, we’re carrying on the tradition,
which 2500 years later still vigorously
applies

Plato, incidentally, c. 428 BC – c. 347 BC

there are a few problems in your argument,
from my perspective, you say “you agree that
we’re aware of our thoughts at the same time as
we’re aware of our own existence”, but that’s an
extrapolation, I am at the most aware of only
one thought, that thought being that
something is thinking, no more, no less

but reason interjects, applies itself to
consciousness, and concludes that
something has just thought, the element
of time and memory enters the fray here,
but not yet explicitly, they are the
handmaidens of consciousness

if something is thinking, which by the very
act of thinking this I am doing, something
must be doing it, I’ve already conceived of
this consciousness as, for me, irrefutably
real, having had already an impression
of it

whatever other impression I might add to
this composite, however, is arbitrary and
therefore moot with respect to what might
actually philosophically be real

the world and everything in it is in the eye
of the beholder

think about it

thoughts are an extrapolation from all
that we can be sure we know, but all
of it is nothing more than a dream

see Shakespeare

“………………………..We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

You wrote, “I am at the most aware of only one thought, that thought being that
something is thinking,”

Unless you argue that something can think without a thought, there are at least two thoughts here. First, the awareness that something is thinking. Second, if something is thinking, that something is thinking a thought. As you said, “consciousness of my consciousness”. There are two “consciousness”:

There is a thinker who is thinking a thought, and there is an observer who is thinking of the thinker. If the thinker and the observer are the same, the thought becomes an infinite recursion, like an image reflected in two parallel mirrors. This is partly why I said people who speculate this have way too much time, in fact, only eternity would suffice.

the world and everything in it is in the eye of the beholder

Where is the beholder himself, if everything is in his eye? Does the world exist when the beholder closes his eye?

you’ve grasped the Cartesian dilemma,
Nemo, the solipsistic circumference – see
“This is the census” again on that last
series of sibilants – that defines our, not
eternal, as you suggest, but very “mortal
coil”, our incarnate cage, or soul, if you
prefer, where “one man in his time plays
many parts”, or woman, solipsistically
and fatally, however remarkable, or
even historic, their contribution

it is a frightening, and sobering, conclusion,
we cannot escape the prison of our reason
but with the key alone of our imagination,
for everything beyond the logic of that first
statement is conjecture, the play of our fears
and desires

something is thinking, I think, then identify
with, become the vessel of, that idea, or, if
you prefer, that thought

that thought is still a conjecture, but it has
an immediacy you can’t deny, it is your
entire, quite literally, reality

but any other thought is of course also
conjecture, just without the manifest
incontrovertibility of the idea of one’s own
existence, my orange might be your red,
but I’ll never be you, or what I interpret as
you, which is not at all how the other guy
sees you either, my lens is merely my
picture of the world, what is real

reason has done a great job of holding it
all together for most of us, but it rests
fundamentally on the wings of our fallible,
of course, imagination, but for the absolute
apparently miracle of mathematics, which
seems to subsist even without our
speculation, popping up like signposts
everywhere, an existential guardian angel,
Pythagoras, maybe, was right

not even dimensions, Nemo, I woke up
after a week in a coma, a car accident, in
a white room, quiet, empty, with only what
seemed like motes floating on a ray of light
coming in from a window, still, ethereal, and
perhaps, I wondered, part of a new afterlife,
who knew, I couldn’t assume I was alive, I
only knew that I existed in an unfamiliar
environment

height, I reasoned, and width, I thought,
were evident, there are at least here two
dimensions, and calmly contemplated
the possibility of the same exile the villains
had felt early in “Superman”, cast away in
their two-dimensional prisons

Kant was wrong, I concluded, we do not
assume time and space as initial certainties,
I don’t have depth yet

later a nurse came in from the centre of my
frame creating at least the impression of a
third spatial element, after which I
concentrated on getting better

that my first thought was of Kant after a
week in a coma has remained for me a
searing example of my essentially
cerebral proclivities, be they ever
nevertheless so fundamentally
unsubstantiated, I think that’s a riot

Forgive me for saying so, but it seems to me that your philosophy is quite incongruent with your personality, which is passionate, sensitive and kind. As far as I can tell, you’re much more gregarious than the demented Nietzsche.

If, as you wrote at the beginning, you can’t even be sure that I exist, why are you taking the trouble to have this conversation? If everything is in a flux, what is there to “grasp” and “tackle”? If all is a figment of the imaginations of beings in their separate cages, what’s the point of conversation? You’re still trapped in your own cage anyway.

Kant may be wrong about some things, but I do agree with him about the difference between noumenon and phenomenon. Our thoughts revolve around the phenomenal, and consequently, they are in flux, “peripheral” as you put it, or evolving, as some believe. But, this doesn’t negate the noumenon, the eternal and unchanging. To use an analogy in biology, when you observe the growth of a seed or an embryo, it seems to be changing constantly, and if you didn’t know what it was, you would think that everything was in flux, but all the while it remains the same substance: a human being.

what’s to forgive, Nemo, I don’t mind at all being
called “passionate, sensitive and kind”

thank you

and you are right, after a study of philosophy I
went my own way, which was what philosophy
had taught me to do, it is a conversation, I
learned, rather than an ideology, that secular
cousin of theology, either system oftentimes
flagrantly autocratic, for instance Plato, or
take your pick of religions

along the way I discovered miracles, I wanted to
talk to my beloved, but somehow I’d only asked
my dad, who’d died earlier the same year, to
speak to me from beyond the grave, I’m your
son, I said, I’ll hear you, and, Nemo, I did, and
all, eventually, the others, I’ve been talking to
all of them ever since

this might seem very strange, of course, but
you can tell from what I’ve written to date,
surely, that I’m not entirely demented,
conversely, maybe I’m inspired, maybe just
eccentric, who knows, take your pick, so
long as I’m not, I think, hurting anybody

Kant, incidentally, didn’t affirm the noumenon,
he merely did not deny it, so he’s made room
for my unorthodox constructions, and miracles,
as a corollary, in general

this was also Descartes’ dilemma essentially,
or Shakespeare’s, “There are more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt
of in your philosophy.”

also my own

we cannot beyond our consciousness affirm,
we can only interpret, I am the only thing I can
affirm, the rest is what you make it, for better
or for worse, this from “the demented”, Nemo,
Nietzsche

therefore Beethoven or Proust, or maybe
even me

I believe in miracles, and so I experience them

I’d asked a friend on a cold winter day with
only icicles everywhere in the city, what
should we do, let’s go out and look for
beautiful things, he replied, we did, and all
the icicles consequently shimmered and
glistened, I’d found a key to finding beauty,
another valuable parable

later, needing more than just beautiful things
to cheer me I asked for miracles, which, Nemo,
like the earlier beautiful things, profusely in
their turn abounded, you just have to be
ready to receive them

I believe there is a noumenon, but I’ll never
be able to prove it, though I feel it profoundly,
and judiciously sort out with the help of
wisdom and poetry, truth and beauty, all
I can muster, the information I receive

I hope it might be of some service

to me there is poetry behind everything,
shimmering, glistening magic, but I’m not
sure that’s what eveybody sees, nor want
to see, I won’t try to impose my perspective,
I can only tell what I see

and I’ve long seen more than mere facts,
what I see, have long seen, is an inherently
transcendental reality

which suggests the probability of other
noumenal worlds

so, to answer your question, I do think
you indeed exist, though I can’t be
absolutely sure of it, though you might
not be a figment of my imagination you
are nevertheless to me merely my
impression of you, but who really are
you, that’s a tricky question, cause you
don’t even know

meanwhile there’s no harm in sharing
even a virtual, irony of ironies,
conversation

To apply Plotinus’ theory of memory to Alzheimer, and answer your earlier question. The disease damaged the first component of memory, i.e., our memory storage facility, but it leaves the second and third components intact, where “we” are most active. People afflicted with Alzheimer are no less human than the rest, because they still have their thoughts, emotions, desires, judgment and will.

To use analogy, I’d liken living with Alzheimer to walking on the beach. Our memory is like the footprints we leave in the sand, which are constantly washed away by the waves, but the lack of footprints doesn’t prevent us from continue walking/living.

I have no doubt that there is a soul, a human
entity, behind even a vegetative living being,
Nemo, let me tell you a story, I worked for
years in a palliative care unit as a volunteer
after the death of my beloved, who had died
there in one of their first units in the late 80s,
it was my way of saying thank you

a woman there lay in extremis, making no
sense of the fray that stirred ceaselessly
about her, her family distraught over her
perilous state fussing and worrying,
helpless and trying to find nevertheless
purpose midst unfamiliar and stressful
feelings, awash in their stray, unsettled,
energy

their senior member, an actual pastor,
asked if I would sit by their mother’s side
while they all took a necessary break for
lunch, of course I immediately acceded,
that’s what I was there for

gently I sat by her side, I had found
solace in a particular Oriental esoteric
faith meanwhile for my own debilitating
anguish, which had bequeathed me a
chant that would settle often and with
reverence my most aggrieved moments,
little by little it had rendered
acknowledgment, resolve, and, dare I
say, even grace, to my distress

I began to murmur this chant as I lay my
hand upon her arm, she all aflutter from
her chronic delirium trying to find,
hopelessly it appeared, a place to settle,
I could only with my touch console
somewhat, I wistfully imagined

in my monotone I continued to issue
the palliative vowel sounds, surrounding
them with as much compassion and
gentle harmony as I could muster,
knowing that these must reach the soul,
something I had been discovering from
my own fraught experience

her body began to settle, there was no
question of reaching her mind, any kind
of intelligible conversation, but you do
that also with a very young child, and like
a very young child she continued to
respond

to my chant, which had been like a river
flowing, constant and murmuring, finding
the most soothing paths of a trickling
rhythm, she began to harmonize

row, row, row, your boat, she began
to sing, haltingly of course, at first
tentatively, but then with more and
more, though ever reliant, confidence

I believe that God had been talking
there to all of us, I turned to see the
family standing in the doorway, still
and hushed

so many pathways have opened up, Nemo,
in our conversation, I’d determined to tackle
them in their chronological order despite
the immediacy, for me, of each question,
each philosophical paradox you might
propose, the order of your submissions

but this reply of yours has me still laughing,
indeed guffawing, and I didn’t want to forego
the possibility of transferring the spontaneity
and exhilaration of the moment if in delivering
my response swiftly I could, timing talks, in
other words, too

another story, another, for me, it appears,
maybe parable, while grieving I’d taken
time off work, cause work, of course, itself
had lost all meaning, why would I hurt in a
world I no longer wanted to even live in,
I had majored in Camus, had been
prodoundly influenced by his “L’Étranger”,
“The Stranger”, and was drowning in the
Absurd

to while away the time somewhat productively
– I’d understood that to merely sit and wait
would not of itself allow me to die, and I wasn’t
about to myself wittingly end it, the conclusion
I’d reached from another revelatory moment,
but that’s another story – I took on a job as a
census worker, going from door to door,
some hundreds of them, if not thousands,
in my neighbourhood, introducing myself
each time as their census taker, “This is
the census”, I said

have you even sensed the sibilants, Nemo,
in that sentence, if you haven’t yet already
counted them, for that matter, there are
even more in this corollary one

I lisp, not in a pronounced manner but,
I’m aware, somewhat noticeably, found
out that my father also did, though strangely
I’d never registered it, my mother after he’d
died, in a conversation with me, noted it

try saying “This is the census” some
hundreds if not thousands of times, Nemo,
the joke becomes cosmic, and indeed it did,
I knew God, or the entity that responded to
my prayers, was about, it was the moment
at which I first smiled, I think I might even
have giggled

I worked, or rather, I ministered, at palliative
care for ten years, to answer your other
question

cheers

Richard

psst: despite our profound, it appears,
philosophical divergences, Nemo,
let’s be friends, I would not hold
your views against you, all roads,
I believe, lead to Rome, so long as
it doesn’t block altogether one’s
path

also philosophers must always be
open to the next question, for none
of them, they know, can ever be
definite, the lesson is in the
conversation, and I’m having here
a great time

Have you thought of writing or already written memoirs? I think I’d enjoy reading them.
Your second story reminded me of the Confessions by St. Augustine,
in which he grieved over the death of his beloved friend.

Descartes might say this about your “This is the census” moment: “I lisp, therefore I exist”.
But how would you interpret the “parable”?

What caused you to stop ministering at the palliative care unit after ten years?

a parable is in the eye of the beholder, Nemo,
nearly by definition, and therefore wide in the
possible breadth of its interpretation, that wide
net, should it catch the imagination of many,
can describe a potent, though indefinable,
moral precept that even whole communities
can then propagate and follow, mysticized
fairy tales, for these last serve a similar
purpose, maybe the age of the listener,
reader, here, is the distinguishing factor,
adults have a hard time with fairy tales

in the story that I told, about a cosmic
dimension to my lisp, if you’re asking what
moral precept I derived from that tale, it is
that something was profoundly watching,
unobtrusive, but gently ready to nudge just
enough to inspire hope, like a second wind

I felt, however solipsistically, that something,
someone, was listening, and that was enough,
that indeed would be, wouldn’t you think,
though the information was entirely
metaphorical and abstract

but I’ve experienced too many moments of
transcendence not to subsribe to a more
than merely rational agenda, Shakespeare
again, “There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.” – “Hamlet”, act 1, scene 5,
lines 186–187 – which I heartily second

no philosopher has ever admitted that but
Proust and Beethoven, which is why I’ve
somewhat put aside classic philosophy,
though I love the Moralists, after Rome
and before Christianity, Saint Augustine,
I’m afraid, however, distorted the facts,
as well as his great acuity, in order to
entrench a mythology, the dominion of
a numinous, entirely male, incidentally,
Trinity, forcing Truth into a submissive,
not to say penitent, and furthermore
impotent, corner until the very Renaissance,
specifically until Descartes, and, by the way,
until his near contemporary, Shakespeare,
1564 -1616, nearly the equal of Beethoven
and Proust in his philosophical perspicacity,
“To be, or not to be” is of course the first
existential soliloquy of our era

Descartes, 1596 – 1650

after ten years at palliative care I had changed,
and the unit had changed, it had become more
regimented and constrictive than it had been in
its early, more companionable, and not yet so
regimented, years, I now had to go through
security to get to my station, which was not at
all the spirit in which I’d entered the service

I also had gone on to other things

I am now, I’m imagining, a poet, and live and
write accordingly, these very missives, Nemo,
are my memoirs, at present you are my main
muse

I like your comment, “I won’t try to impose my perspective, I can only tell what I see”, which reminded me of a sentimental story that I had heard a long time ago. The story was in first-person narrative and went like this:

I [an art merchant] traveled to a far country on a business trip, and found lodging in a small family inn owned by an blind old man and his daughter. During an after-dinner conversation, I learned that the old man was actually a connoisseur of art with many famous paintings in his collection. Naturally I was delighted when he offered to show me the paintings. But his daughter was visibly distressed and signaled me to follow her.as she went to fetch the paintings. She explained to me that they had fallen on hard times and she had no choice but to sell the paintings to survive, in spite of the old man’s firm instructions that the paintings must not be sold, because they were his life. He had become blind due to sickness so he didn’t know that the paintings were all gone. When the daughter brought the blank frames to the old man, he proudly presented them to me, naming them one by one, while caressing them gently with his withered hands. Staring at the blank frames, I listened in silence and shock. Suddenly, the old man stopped, he sensed that something was missing, something didn’t feel quite right. What happened to his beloved painting? The daughter looked to me in desperation for help. I hesitated but finally mustered enough courage to speak. I picked up where the old man had left off, and, recalling from memory, I described the details of the paintings and complimented the old man’s taste. He beamed with pride and delight.
….
There are many ways to interpret the story, one of which is this: if the “paintings” were all in the old man’s mind, and “I” had not seen them nor anybody else, it would be impossible to carry out the conversation, and there would be no sharing, nor inspiration, nor delight.

This is the armchair Platonist’s answer to the demented Nietzsche: we are able to share our thoughts and feelings with one another, because we both behold the same underlying intelligible reality, both within ourselves and without. If we are only conscious of ourselves and nothing else, conversation would be impossible and pointless. Even Nietzsche, before he fell to dementia, couldn’t resist the desire for conversation since he published his works– as you say say rightly, philosophy is conversation. Otherwise, he could have kept all to himself, in his private notebook.

your question is probing, Nemo, I’m not sure
that even Plato would have come to such
corollary conclusions as what you seem to
be suggesting, which is to say that Plato’s
absolutes, distant and distinct from us, as I
understand them, as God, yet received by
us a priori, or, inherently at birth, as you
would have it, suggest the underlying
existential commonality of our experience

you forget the pivotal factor of birth here,
Nemo, I think, incarnation, spirit, or
something, made matter, like buds in
spring, bursting with each its own
unpredictable, and wondrous, existence

my experience is that I cannot know even
dimensions before I formally deduce them,
before I enter this world, though the
dimensions themselves may indeed be there

who knew love, Nemo, before experiencing
it, the thing that more than anything else
moves our world, remember the adolescent
who had to put it all together piece by
disconcerting piece, we had to learn it all
at the movies to finally make any kind of
sense of it, playing out our battles in water
too deep for most of us most of the time,
and ultimately too treacherous for many

there is mathematics, there are probably
even dimensions, Nemo, but I don’t know
about any other merely abstract world
beyond this one, for better or for worse

You wrote, “my experience is that I cannot know even dimensions before I formally deduce them,”

That is a unique experience. Einstein came to the same conclusion when he developed the Theory of Special Relativity, though perhaps he didn’t have quite the same experience. You both beheld the same underlying reality, although you expressed it in different ways.

Plato’s Absolute, i.e., which is Beauty, Goodness and Truth in One, is immanent. It is distinct but not distant from us, and every soul can ascend to it by reason and intellect. There are different types and levels of beauty, in the human body, in nature, in the universe, in science and art, literature and music. One doesn’t have to be a “Superman” to see beauty or create beauty. Every life is an artistic activity. Every individual is an artist.

The concept of Absolute by no means deny or diminish the freedom of individual existence. On the contrary, the more diverse and free the individual existence, the better and fuller it manifest Absolute Beauty. For instance, Beethoven’s Ninth, unless each member of the choir and orchestra plays his/her best part, the beauty of the symphony cannot be manifested nor experienced by the audience.

Unlike Kant who believes that the noumenal is unknowable, Platonists reason that the noumenal and the phenomenal correspond with one another (sort of like the way an image in the mirror corresponds to the original), since they are both derived from one and the same intelligible reality. Because of this “correspondence”, it is possible to do science. We have been able to predict with accuracy the movement of the stars and other events occurring in nature; Because of this “correspondence” between our consciousness and the outside world, it is possible for us to interact with other people and the world.

you say, Nemo, “Plato’s Absolute, i.e., which is
Beauty, Goodness and Truth in One”, which
seems to me anachronistic, a premature
conflation with Christian, however implicit,
thought, I don’t think Plato would’ve had a
Trinity, whatever for in a society replete with
a variety of quite serviceable, not to mention
glorious, deities

when you speak of “[e]very life”, “[e]very
individual” being “an artistic activity”, “an
artist”, what about animals, insects, trees,
do roses perceive their own beauty, these
are lives, even creative, even inspiring ones,
though I draw the line at inspired, I suspect
they don’t consciously know it

therefore “Beauty, Goodness and Truth” are in
the eye of the beholder, no, as we ask in
French, and the beholder is our own human
only, it appears, incarnation, blessed as we
are, for better or for worse, with
self-consciousness, ““Superm[e]n”” need
not even, but only superfluously, apply

the Tree of Knowledge bore the fruit of
which all of us have partaken, for better or
for worse, by our very nature, and we’ve
created a poem around it in order to
understand

it has been mighty, if flawed

about mirrors, when I yearned for word
from above, or from wherever, I understood
I’d have to forego my entrenched scepticism

under the influence of Sartre and Camus,
the Existentialists, whose ideas dominated
the Western World, and my university years,
however nowadays incredible, a time when
Van Cliburn, a Classical music pianist,
would return from a sealed Communist
Russia, no less, to a New York ticker tape
parade, a more idealistic time than our
present more rapacious, morally bankrupt,
apparently, epoch, I’d believed in Being
and Nothingness, and the corollary Absurd,
I was alone in an indifferent Universe

to assume spirits, an extraterrestrial entity
who might be responsive, would require
an act of absolute faith, a profound
disorder in my otherwise determinedly
rational perspective

but I had no choice but to succumb to
even irrationality, I knew, for any chance
of grace, you need to believe in miracles
to experience them

need I say that I found that transcendence,
I called it crossing the Bridge of Faith

where everything was the same but
different, Nemo, like crossing through a
mirror, like Alice, and discovering another,
infinitely more enchanted, however
numinous and otherworldly, world

Beauty, Goodness and Truth are a triad, but not all triads are Christian in origin or character. Belief in the unity of beauty and goodness is characteristic of the ancient Greeks, and Plato further demonstrate the unity of Beauty and Truth in Symposium. As for the “glorious” deities, their priests have no place or recognition whatsoever in Plato’s Republic, which is ruled by Reason.

Plotinus has changed my way of looking at art, which is commonly defined as a human activity. Since Intellect permeates the world, art is not limited to human, but even plants and flowers, though they are not sentient beings, are capable of artistic activity. To use an analogy, a choreographer consciously designs the dance moves, but the dancers perform the moves.without being conscious of the whole design.

Come to think of it, all human artists either imitate directly or draw inspiration from Providence. How can they deny the artistry of Providence, and then turn around call their plagiarism “art”?

A mirror, in so far as it is a mirror, enables us to look at the world from a different angle, and presents to us features that have been hidden before, but it is still a reflection of the multifaceted reality. Since you found transcendence, have you experienced anything for which there is no counterpart in this world?

you’ve gone off in so many different, doubtful
to me, directions, Nemo, I don’t know where to
start, then again I must sound ever the same
to you whenever I write, there’s apparently
much here we have to discuss

but I think the central issue remains the
possibility of a firm, which is to say, rational,
understanding of the substance of our world,
something you ardently affirm, but I, and the
“demented” Nietzsche, incidentally, equally
fervently mistrust, even deem fundamentally
impossible

Descartes, by the by, remained on the fence,
he never found out what hit him, never realized
what he’d done, but began nevertheless in his
wake the irreversible march toward uncertainty,
modernity, which we dressed up in the powerful
attractions of science

we’ve come a long way from superstition,
we’re even presently on our way to Mars,
we’ve even discovered what’s being called
the God particle, but I think we’re still in
Plato’s cave with respect to certain
knowledge, we’re only seeing shadows,
we can never see the sun

there is surely an underlying reality, but
you, I, we, can only imagine it, which is
why we’re still wondering what it’s all
about, despite having of course our
kids and building our houses, we are
compelled to invent our environments
with the tools that we’ve been given

I don’t think animals and plants are
artists, we supply that moniker for
them, some of us, to describe what
we, some of us, can, but only really
anthropomorphically, see, Fido will
never acknowledge himself an artist,
nor paint our picture, for instance, on
his doghouse wall, no matter what
Plotinus might’ve said to the contrary

where do I get my own, ahem, inspiration,
I will admit, not from me alone, but that
doesn’t make me a plagiarist

“have [ I ] experienced anything for which
there is no counterpart in this world?”, all
that I have experienced is in my world,
unquestionably, I think it might have
some conjunction with the one you
call this one, but I’ll never be sure,
I can only suspect

all of this would be moot, Nemo, and indeed
many will think one could better spend one’s
time than at splitting these merely philosophical
apparently tresses, were it not for their
revolutionary consequences, men will kill, Nemo,
to preserve their god – not ever, note, the plural
here, never their “gods” – but their one imperious
divinity, in the figure of a man, by the way, mostly,
their Platonically inspired Ideal, their Platonic, but
patently murderous, Absolute, I blame Plato for
that, not Nietzsche

and I blame the Christian Church, furthermore,
for distorting the Platonic Trinity, your beautifully
rendered “Beauty, Goodness and Truth”, though
that’s something also, I think, of an anachronistic
distortion

You wrote, ” the possibility of a firm, which is to say, rational, understanding of the substance of our world, something you ardently affirm, but I, and the “demented” Nietzsche, incidentally, equally fervently mistrust, even deem fundamentally impossible

If it is impossible to have a rational understanding of the world, of which Nietzsche is a part, then it is impossible to know what Nietzsche believes or “fervently mistrust”. Do you realize that your statements are contradicting your philosophy?

I find your accusation of Plato irrational and groundless. How is belief in an objective Absolute Truth murderous? On the contrary, I think it is life-saving. For instance, it is wiser to accept that the Law of Gravity exists, than to disregard it and suffer the consequences of a bad fall. If anything, I think a philosophy that only acknowledges the existence of oneself and disregards all others is more likely to cause it’s adherents to commit murder, because other human beings are no more than phantoms in his sight.

As for Fido being an artist, just give him a pint of paint, and you’ll find that he does indeed paint pictures. Some people call it “modern art”. What’s the difference between a plagiarist and an artist who imitates Providence but does not acknowledge the source of his inspiration?

Nemo

(P.S. I have not responded to your comments about Christianity, though I disagree with them, because I think it is beyond the scope of this discussion)

you argue, Nemo, that one cannot “have a
rational understanding of the world, of which
Nietzsche is a part”, and profess to
simultaneously “know what Nietzsche
believes or “fervently mistrust[s]” ”

but I do not profess to “know what Nietzsche
believes or “fervently mistrust[s]’ ”, nor did I
profess to “have a rational understanding of
the world”, in the sense that I have all the
answers, I am only expressing opinions,
as informed as I can make them, an
interpretation, as indeed I believe
you yourself are

therefore there is no contradiction in my
opinion, the one you most vehemently
seem to wish to reject, I do not profess
certainty

which might be what you are about to
do

but further

the pursuit of an Absolute, an immutable
standard, has too often, and therefore
probably inherently, fallen prey to its
dogma, crucifying, metaphorically of
course but also otherwise, and often,
opponents

I’m afraid of pehaps sensing that most
nefarious side in your often less than
patient comments

the Absolute imposed by the Catholic
Church threw the Western World into
the Dark Ages for an unbelievable
1500 years, before we came out of
our, indeed, Platonic cave

I have no use for the Absolute as an
abstraction, the Absolute can only
be the sum of all the opinions of
those who have, have had, will have,
a notion about It, nothing otherwise

but an opinion seems to be the way
in which we find our path

that seems to me closer to our answer

and a free, respectful always, exchange
of opinions, no matter how entrenched,
seems to me the only manner in which
to move forward, after all, how long was
the earth believed to be flat before
someone had the nerve, the verve, and
the determination, to wonder about it

in a world where everyone’s view is
considered, a less certain world, we
would be less willing to die, or kill,
for any of our arbitrary ideas

incidentally, these are the teachings of
Jesus, remember, turn the other cheek

read also Martha Nussbaum here, ever
profoundly pertinently

what else, Nemo, is, meanwhile, “beyond
the scope of this discussion”

or should we merely agree now to having
disagreed

let me say that it has been for me a
delightful conversation that I would
not want to see end, I think we could
have a lot to learn from each other, but
perhaps I’ve touched, however
unintentionally, a nerve, for which I
wholeheartedly apologize

As I said at the very beginning, you are “sensitive”, and I was right, because you rightly perceived that I was becoming impatient. My apologies. Patience is not my forte. 🙂 However, you have not “touched a nerve”, as this is by no means an emotional discussion from my pov. I have no intention to “vehemently reject” your position (after all it is yours not mine), but only to share my perspective, including what I perceive to be irrational arguments.

Here are the two statements you made;
” I, and the “demented” Nietzsche, incidentally, equally fervently mistrust, even deem fundamentally impossible”,
“I do not profess to “know what Nietzsche believes or “fervently mistrust[s]‘”.

Is that not a self-contradiction?

You say that you’re making an interpretation. But, what is knowledge but an interpretation? A translation from the concrete and the objective to the abstract and subjective, just as we translate a work of literature from one language to another? By interpreting Nietzsche to yourself, you gain a rational understanding of him, and by interpreting him to others, you share that understanding.

I think an important distinction should be made between a) the belief in the existence of Absolute Truth” and b) the belief of one’s monopoly of the Absolute Truth. You seem to be passionately rejecting b), which is quite understandable. But Platonism is not b) but a). It does not claim monopoly of the Absolute Truth, but instead, Plato and Socrates both exhort their listeners to pursue Beauty, Goodness and Truth, to pursue virtue, to be the lover of wisdom, which is the literal meaning of “philosophy”,

According to Einstein, this pursuit of the Absolute Truth is also the guiding principle of the scientists. Without this passionate pursuit of the truth, we would never discover that the earth is not flat. Now think about this: Can you still insist that it is uncertain whether or not the earth is flat, that it is impossible to have a rational understanding of the shape of the earth?

You argue that uncertainty makes people less likely to kill. But most people who kill are not driven by belief in the Absolute, but by their lust for pleasure, wealth and power. Some may kill in the name of Truth as a disguise for their ulterior motives, but it would be unfair and irrational to blame the Truth for their acts.

I’ll refrain from discussing the Catholic Church, partly because to me this discussion is about Platonism, and Christianity is not Platonism (though they share many similar aspects), and partly because I’m not associated with the Catholic Church and frankly don’t know enough about it to say anything useful.

first of all let me raise a glass to our conversation,
a toast that it might live long

and thank you for your continued respectful and
penetrating participation, I will endeavour to as
assiduously hold up

that said, we get into, as I see it, the question
posed by Wittgenstein, an obstacle of the
most impenetrable sort, the egregious
unreliability of language, what do you mean
when you say something, and how does that
synch with the other guy’s interpretation of it,
or, indeed, girl’s

your meat could be my poison, my Plato,
your Proust

indeed which one of us is right about this,
is Plato a saint or a sinner, a boon or a
blight

though Proust, of course, would remain
unquestionably and irreversibly here,
ever, surely, for both of us, a benefactor
of positively Promethean, natch,
proportions

what has become here then of the
Absolute, gone up in a whiff of, just
as insubstantial, smoke, the exhalations,
note, of a fully material mens sana,
sound mind, which can be nothing
without the enveloping corpore sano,
sound body

should there, in the instance, however,
be a One, an Absolute, we would not, nor
can anyway ever, from our intrinsically
divergent perspectives, be able to, in
any meaningful way, know It

more practically and topically, when
my mother had her living room walls
painted, my blue was her green, or vice
versa, in either case adamantly, trying
both of us to eke out from each other
concessions to a position, undyingly,
each, though ever politely, both, held,
a model accommodation, which is to say,
without the often attendant bombs

we remained puzzled, however, each,
ever, by insidious, and inescapable,
doubt, who saw the right colour

there is a technical solution to my mother’s
wall, I know, but only after great psychological
adjustment, even torment, will the blue think
his or her visual impression another colour

and who is mistaken

or can some people be ever right,
and ever wrong

this, incidentally, is the central problem
of philosophy, not just our own central
topic

and its resolution the central problem
of politics

in this instance when her cataracts were
removed, her blue became green, or vice
versa, I’d have to be in her apartment, I
can’t remember which colour, right now,
it was I saw, another philosophical
conundrum, but surely, you get the
picture, interpretation is highly
subjective, and porous

which is why Science requires absolutely
unanimous approval, if you’ll forgive this
metaphorical only use of that prickly
adverb here, to determine Its still
fundamentally ever tenuous theories

we’ve even only recently deconstructed
even time,

or Time

now there’s a God for you, Giver of context

however, even there, It would appear arbitrary,
there may be a another Reality beyond our
particular three-dimensional Plato’s cave

but I digress

my misuse of the word “know” in citing
my apparently contradictory statements,
is at fault, I can never know, I can only
interpret, with custom we have come to
accept our suppositions as fact, and hope
that everyone else will do the same, which
we mostly do, except when we have wars
because of some intractable position,
where someone has set a price on his, her
incontrovertible, but still fundamentally
arbitrary, opinion, even of ownership,
family structure, interpersonal affairs,
like this one

but we are talking with only air, no
concrete certainty

I believe Nietzsche, in other words, to
have thought my thoughts, or I, rather,
to have incorporated his, but that is only
my understanding of it, which surely I
propound, though I might quite possibly
be wrong, but, Nemo, I can’t remember
the last time I was, I could check, I keep
a tally

scientists, I believe, are indeed seeking
always to know, perfecting their idea of
Reality, but Truth can only be the sum
of all things we think It is, nothing else,
nothing more, after all what other entity
that we know knows anything at all
about It, about Truth

we can only think there is a Real out
there, and make the best of It, the rest
is, Shakespeare again,

“…………………………………. such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

You wrote, ” should there, in the instance, however, be a One, an Absolute, we would not, nor can anyway ever, from our intrinsically divergent perspectives, be able to, in any meaningful way, know It”

Our opinions are not “intrinsically”, but “accidentally” divergent. If they are intrinsic, they would not be affected by changes in our circumstances. But often times our opinions are affected by external circumstances. Therefore, they are not “intrinsic”. For instance, your story about the color of the wall reminds me of a similar story of how the English chemist John Dalton discovered color blindness. He himself was color blind but never realized it until his mother (or aunt) disagreed with him on the color. Without such a defect, there would be no disagreement.

Truth cannot be a sum of opinions or even an unanimous decision of all people. Why? Because the sum of contrary opinions amount to nothing, and the sum of contradictory opinions only lead to confusion, since people are never unanimous about anything.

To use a classic Platonic analogy: If you have a serious disease and want to be healed. Will you call everyone in from the street, hold a public assembly and have them vote for a treatment of your disease? Of course not. You’ll seek out the specialist in the field and have him examine you and give you the proper diagnosis and treatment. Because he possesses the knowledge, whereas the others don’t. Even a grain of truth is worth more than a boatload of false opinions.

Having said the above, however, I agree that the truth may be multifaceted, like the color of light shining through a prism. Because our senses have their limitations, we can only see part of the spectrum, similarly, our rational faculty may also be limited, and we only see the Truth in part. This is why dialogues such as we’re having are meaningful. That we may see the rainbow, while not losing sight of our own color.

“So please your majesty
That we may wake the king: he hath slept long.”
King Lear Act IV Scene VII

oof, Nemo, again where do I start, I’ll try to
tackle merely Truth here, deconstruct It, so
that we can know what we’re even talking
about

what do you mean by Truth

something corresponds to what it is that
we see, hear, feel, I would think, to be
locked in my head, my spirit, a fundamental
unity, without the support of an underlying
Reality, would be horrible, a profound, and
unbearable, solitude, I don’t want any more
to even try to imagine it, though, in my
youthful invincibilty, I once did, it would
nearly drive me, sometimes, I remember,
crazy

I would try to guess what people would
say in their next breath and found that
mostly I could do it, that mostly I could
get it right, which didn’t do much for an
outside Reality

but, again, babies must learn to separate,
not easily, their suddenly unfamiliar world
from their initially undifferentiated senses,
their identity from what we understand to
be Reality, I’d been merely atavistically
revisiting that fundamental experience

I first fell in love, incidentally, when I met
someone I wasn’t able to preempt, to my
utter fascination, at which point I was
forced to acknowledge not only Reality
but also probably a Heaven, it has
become a condition, I fall in love with
only people from other planets, or, if
you like, dimensions

so, Nemo, I am also subservient to an
ideal, or even an Ideal

but it, or It, is my utter fabrication, though,
manifestly, not an uninformed one

my Truth is that ethereal, a bedrock,
however, of my nevertheless basically
nebulous view of life, made out of,
indeed, thin air

I think, according to Descartes, therefore
I am, and of that, of myself, I am not at
all speculative, for I think, listen

Truth, incidentally, is a function of our
species, assuming that it is a formal
Reality is akin to placing ourselves,
as we once did, at the centre of the
Universe, we were apparently
egregiously wrong about that, it
seems to be generally now agreed,
I suspect an Absolute, or Idealized,
potential Reality, is asking for hubris,
and too often, incidentally, we get it,
see wars, torture, man’s inhumanity
to not only man

about the world which has mathematical
dimensions we are mostly in agreement,
two plus two will always equal four in our
rational construct, and Science seems to
flow pretty smoothly from that

therefore Truth with respect to matter I
will not question, it is the grid we are all
at least comfortable with, like speaking
the same language, despite its even
basic insufficiencies, these fairly easy
mostly to patch up with persistence
and ingenuity

but Plato’s Truth, Ideal, or Absolute, is
of a more noumenal, spiritual, which is
to say, abstract, order, and as such, like
Beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,
Truth is what we think it is

is John Dalton wrong to have seen a
divergent colour, and who could tell
him that his blue was green, his red,
orange, when these were categorically
his impressions, dissent is a matter
merely of concensus

Truth, I believe, is our accommodation,
and is no more than the sum of its
collective parts, the truths that
scientists unearth are Science, not
Truth, Reality, not Wisdom

other worlds would have entirely
different conceptions of the Universe
for being other than we, us

we are assuming we have the answer,
Nemo, to imponderables

therefore, not Philosophy, I insist,
but Art, and metaphorical rather
than categorical ideologies

You only ones
I ever knew
you that have shown me
what I came to see
from the beginning
just as it was leaving
you that showed me the faces
in the realms of summer
the rivers the moments of gardens
all the roads that led here
the smiles of recognition
the silent rooms at nightfall
and have looked through the glasses
my mother was wearing when she died
you that I have never seen
except nowhere in a mirror
please go on showing me
faces you led me to
daylight the bird moment
the leaves of morning
as long as I look
hoping to catch sight
of what has not yet been seen